<div dir="ltr">Moderator: I changed the subject line. <br>--------------<br>Mr. Cook: <br><br>WOW!! It is so gratifying to find someone who remembers OTA, and fondly. <br><br>OTA taught me a lot. I wondered about staff directors on individual reports; they brought together consultants and advisors from many fields and experiences, then crafting unassailable reports. <br><br>I regarded OTA higher than all US government agencies, including the Congressional Research Service and the General Accounting Office (my other favorites). <br>-------<br><br>I very much agree with the view "<span style="color:rgb(31,73,125);font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;font-size:medium">methods and models can divide and antagonize". </span>This is because methods have become religious rituals and scientists in search of grants innovate in methods and models because that's how they differentiate themselves and create a "groupie culture". <br><br>What stovers argue among themselves mirrors the food/fund fight of science and, more importantly, advocacy groups who have to catch attention with outlandish claims (that HAP "kills", for instance) because they too have to persuade the funders. <br><br>Knowingly or unknowingly, scientists become tools of bureaucrats and self-proclaimed "saviors" (of the earth, of the poor, of poor women, whatever).<br><br>Dan Dimiduk is on-the-mark about advocates conflating claims by merging diverse issues that have partisan divides. That is a trick to deceive funders who may also get in on the game. I noticed that in the DfID program for clean energy with Teri; bureaucrats have an easier time justifying how one stone will kill five birds at the same time. <br><br>Or a miracle stove will cook five meals at the same time - meal for the cook and her family, meal for the M&E beancounters, meal for epidemiology and GBD cooks, meal for bureaucrats, meal for Mrs Clinton. <br><br>This is inescapable. I have also marketed promises. <br><br>Let's just be honest and accept the rot that is our fate. No point agonizing over some idealized past. <br><br>Still, it is good to spice up the discussions. <br> <br>I suggest one particular OTA report from 1978 - Direct Use of Coal. It is a corrective to the notion that fuels per se are dirty, as the GACC/EPA/WHO combine propaganda claims. <br><br>Kirk Smith, et al. wrote in 2000 that it is not the fuels but how they are burned. And that CO2 is the least harmful species. <div><br><font size="2">"S</font><font size="2"><font face="">imple stoves using solid fuels </font><font face="">do not merely convert fuel carbon into carbon dioxide (CO</font></font><font size="1">2</font><font size="2"> <font face="">), which is then taken </font><font face=""><font face="">up by vegetation during the next growing season. Be</font>cause of poor combustion </font><font face="">conditions, such stoves actually divert a significant portion of the fuel carbon </font><font face="">into products of incomplete combustion (PICs), which in general have greater </font><font face="">impacts on <span class="gmail-il">climate</span> than CO</font></font><font style="font-size:12.8px"><font size="1">2</font><font size="2">. Eventually most PICs are oxidized to CO </font><font size="1">2</font></font><font size="2"><font face="">, but in </font><font face="">the meantime they have greater global warming potentials than CO</font></font><font size="1">2 </font><font size="2"><font face="">by itself. </font><b><font face="">Indeed, if one is going to put carbon gases into the atmosphere, the least damaging </font><font face="">from a global warming standpoint is CO</font></b></font><b style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="" size="1"> 2</font></b><font size="2"><b><font face="">, most PICs have a higher impact per </font><font face="">carbon atom. The policy implications of this diversion of carbon to PICs are </font></b><font face=""><b>profound.</b>" (Smith et al. 2000)</font></font><div style="font-size:12.8px"><font size="2"></font> </div><div>James Hansen said something comparable. On that separately. <br><br>Nikhil<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"> </div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 11:31 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cec1863@gmail.com" target="_blank">cec1863@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div lang="en-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:initial"> <div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br style="display:initial"></div> <div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br style="display:initial"></div> <div style="font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Sent from my BlackBerry 10 <wbr>smartphone.</div> <table width="100%" style="background-color:white"> <tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size:initial;text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> <div style="border-style:solid none none;border-top-color:rgb(181,196,223);border-top-width:1pt;padding:3pt 0in 0in;font-family:tahoma,"bb alpha sans","slate pro";font-size:10pt"> <div><b>From: </b><a href="mailto:cec1863@gmail.com" target="_blank">cec1863@gmail.com</a></div><div><b>Sent: </b>Saturday, September 10, 2016 10:34 AM</div><div><b>To: </b>Dan Dimiduk</div><div><b>Subject: </b>A few footnotes about the late great Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) - back to the future?</div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="border-style:solid none none;border-top-color:rgb(186,188,209);border-top-width:1pt;font-size:initial;text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></div><br><div> <div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div> <div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Greetings, </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">These days the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment exists only in the realm of memory and a searchable data base at a website in Princeton. It was terminated in the mid 1990s by the Senate and the House long before the T Party during B Clinton's second term and may have been collateral damage caused by Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. See what Grand Pa Google and Wikipedia have to say? </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">I worked briefly for OTA briefly in the late 1970's and early 80's on a comprehensive look at the potential contribution of appropriate technology - as defined by Schumacher in his big book - Small Is Beautiful. He convincingly argued that the design and fabrication of technos should be decentralized and de-scaled to the point where Communitas could democratically humanize technology.... thereby ensuring that TECHNOS serves rather than dominates humanity. The "TA" that resulted was entitled something like "technology for local development". </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">There are some 500 down loadable TA's in the OTA data base. </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">The point I was trying to make is that big or little science and it's methods and models can divide and antagonize or it can be used to gradually build an inclusive common ground that is dynamic enough to unify and create useful new science and technologies that create new and fairly distributed wealth that is environmentally neutral and net positive for our species! </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Slow and steady wins most marathons!! </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">I suppose the appropriate technology movement of the 1970's tried to administer a stiff dose of modesty about the role of science and technos in perfecting human affairs. It was a methodology for reducing the bureaucratic abuse of science by governmental bodies at all levels of organization. AT was simply about getting plain old fashioned hubris out of government by lowering the fantasy factor; remember Bucky Fuller talking endlessly about "doing more with less". Good engineering practice but not much comfort when there is not enough to eat. </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Forgive the deja vu. I've gotten old along the way. Slow and steady also leads to the grave!</div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div> <div style="font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Sent from my BlackBerry 10 <wbr>smartphone.</div> <table width="100%" style="background-color:white"> <tbody><tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size:initial;text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> <div style="border-style:solid none none;border-top-color:rgb(181,196,223);border-top-width:1pt;padding:3pt 0in 0in;font-family:tahoma,"bb alpha sans","slate pro";font-size:10pt"> <div><b>From: </b>Dan Dimiduk</div><div><b>Sent: </b>Saturday, September 10, 2016 8:11 AM</div><div><b>To: </b><a href="mailto:cec1863@gmail.com" target="_blank">cec1863@gmail.com</a></div><div><b>Subject: </b>Re: [Stoves] News 9 September 2016: Biofuels "worse than petrol" for the environment, new study finds</div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="border-style:solid none none;border-top-color:rgb(186,188,209);border-top-width:1pt;font-size:initial;text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></div><br><div><div><div>Where is the OTA? Same place the rest of the government went when the Tea Party dismantled it. - Dan </div><div><br></div><div><i><font style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID</font></i></div></div><br><br><a href="mailto:cec1863@gmail.com" target="_blank">cec1863@gmail.com</a> wrote:<br><br> <div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">OMG Crispin the sky is refusing to fall on Chicken Little's head! Time to re-model or is it simply a case of mistaken identity where CO2 is falsely accused of being the main culprit in the Climate Change soap opera. What would Gilbert and Sullivan have done with Climate - to change or not to change - as a tragicomic operetta? Think of an adaptation of the Mikado. Who plays the Lord High Executioner.</div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Science and the internet are apparently uneasy bedfellows. Why? Because it is now so easy to provoke world wide media riots by asking talking head experts the wrong questions. Presto: we get to witness scientists behaving badly on NPR and PBS not mention the FOX empire. </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Where is the defunct Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) when we desperately need non partisan "science tribunals" capable of bringing together public interest scientists to creatively reconcile their different points of view. </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">During the 1970's and 80's the OTA created a nonpartisan (neutral) arena in which scientists were formed into balanced teams to research and report upon controversial matters in science to the congressmen and women elected to serve the best interest of their constituents. </div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">In so far as humanly possible, the OTA funded a neutral institutional space where multi-disciplinary teams of scientists were asked to work thru their differences and disagreements over evidence, conceptualizations, methods of observation and instrumentation, and the application of science to the solution of real world problems. The end point of OTA was to avoid counter productive partisan science by growing the common ground and innovating the next generation of experimentation required to practically and theoretically resolve big science questions</div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">The OTA apparently grew from Ralph Nader's path breaking work on consumer protection in the 1960's and 1970's which fed and cross pollinated with the Science for the Citizen Program at NSF. It is obvious to me that we desperately need the heroic services of a resurrected OTA type institution in the USA to replace digital fora with <span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial">face to face meetings and processes that charge small multi-disciplinary groups of scientists with inventing or discovering sufficient common ground to actually serve the public interest in the field of small stoves for the half a billions households at the BOP.</span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial"><br></span><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial"></span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial">il they manage to resolve highly partisan issues of such divisive questions as: climate dynamics, gendering, GMO foods, chemical farming, costs/benefits of antibiotics in animal feeds, energy economics and environmental accounting, causes & cures of drug addiction epidemics, and - perhaps even - the identification of APPROPRATE domestic stove indicators and program objectives, etc.....then science will begin to advance the well being of all the citizens of the USA and the citizens of the world. </span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial"><br></span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial">The list of highly politicized issues is very long and conflicts dividing the experts acrimonous. Tragically the dominant modes of faceless digital communication in these early days of the internet era make it difficult or even impossible to build bridges and discover the latent common ground between right and left, conservative and progressive world views.</span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial"><br></span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial">Nader as an 80 something activist is now preaching that left and right, conservative and progressive, must unite in the radical center! </span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial"><br></span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial">The ISO for small stoves is apparently very premature. Imagine Ford and Chevrolet and all the early car makers trying to agree on an ISO that led to the perfect car for the bottom thtird of humanity. Surely we need more of Crispin's high performance stoves which empower the local stove fabricators and traditional fuel producers thereby strengthening the regional economies of Tajekistan et al and everybody up and down the domestic stove value creation chain. If Crispin has helped in situ stove makers to fabricate a superior household stove for ± $30 then let the competition for the Tadjik stove market begin in earnest!</span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial"><br></span></div><div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span style="font-size:initial;line-height:initial;text-align:initial">Bravo Crispin!</span></div> <div style="width:100%;font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></div> <div style="font-size:initial;font-family:calibri,"slate pro",sans-serif,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125);text-align:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Sent from my BlackBerry 10 <wbr>smartphone. </div></div></div></div>
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